Today I received a text from Sky Zone, a local trampoline park, indicating that they appreciated our recent visit.  The problem was that we hadn’t been there since Christmas Break which caused me some concern.  Were they billing us for a visit we didn’t take?  Since Shirley takes care of all of our banking needs and is the only one with internet access to our bank account I texted her to see if there were any SkyZone charges.  This was an epic mistake because she found a $29.99 monthly re-occurring charge that has been going on for 7 months.  This caused her to contact the bank and find out that I was on the express platinum unlimited carwash plan at Mister car wash.  My vehicle is black and requires bi-daily washes to stay pristine.  I explained to her that if I purchased a car wash whenever I needed to get a car wash it would be much more expensive than the monthly plan.  In response, she said just get a car wash when you get gas.  Blasphemy, I may as well go to the one of those self serve car washes that is akin to using a power washer on your car.  Unfortunately, Shirley discovered that there was an express option that was $19.99 per month, however my owner’s manual indicated that opting for any carwash lower than the Platinum package voids my warranty.

Obviously, since I have no access to the bank account(s) I have no idea how much we spend on a monthly basis, but Shirley claims it’s a lot and at lest $7 a week is spent on Crickets for our bearded dragon who just sits on a log and takes giant shits.  I’m willing to attempt to tighten the belt a bit when it comes to the family finances, but I’m not downgrading to the express package, they probably don’t even use soap when you are going the express route.

Speaking of saving money, I was at Marshal’s burning a little time before I picked up the kids from school this week and I found a couple pair of Under Armour tights.  Parker use to wear athletic pants to school every day but now is into tights with basketball shorts over them.  When I showed him the tights I bought for him it was love at first sight, he said I am going to wear these on Friday to Daniel’s house.  What six year old thinks that way?  My son that is what kind of six year old thinks that way.  Even though he doesn’t look a whole lot like me I know he is my son for a number of reasons, his age inappropriate attention to his apparel, his competitiveness, and his awful temper.  The reality is that Parker and Aiden are the modern day version of Jacob and Esau other than the fiery temper they share.  Jacob and Esau were twin brothers from biblical times who couldn’t have been more opposite.  Aiden has labeled himself an “indoor” person and the same could have been said for Jacob.  Furthermore, Jacob was what one would call a momma’s boy and so is Aiden.  Esau was a hunter who was a true outdoorsmen.  Parker is trending on the same path, he loves being outside and can’t wait to start hunting with all of his  relatives from Fremont on Shirley’s side of the family.

The outdoor/indoor difference between the two reared it’s ugly head on Sunday.  Parker couldn’t get outside fast enough to play in the fresh snow and sunshine.  These days happen so infrequently in Michigan due to the mood altering cloud cover that typically dominates Michigan winters, that you really need to make the most of such a day.  Parker and I were doing that and we decided to force Aiden to accompany us hoping our enthusiasm would rub off on him.  I went inside for something and no less than 30 seconds later Aiden came in the house crying claiming Parker threw snow in his face.  Parker, following behind a sobbing Aiden, didn’t deny but defended his actions saying Aiden told him Jasper was Aiden’s cat and not Parkers.  Obviously, this was a perfectly acceptable response but Aiden saw it as an opening to take all of his snow gear off and remain indoors for the remainder of the day.

Shirley had picked up her 90 year old grandma to spend the day at our house (who may end up outliving me, she still has at least 15 years left) because I was going to be taking off later that afternoon.  Her grandma is also an indoor person and has been her whole life, but is even more of one now that she needs the assistance of a walker to get around.  She decided to go take a seat in our TV room so that she had a vantage point to see what we were doing outside.  When I re-entered the house I found Shirley’s grandma with a remote in her hand, the TV remote, not the cable remote, she asked me to turn the TV on for her.  I was perplexed, sometimes I have difficulty turning the TV on even with the proper remote, there was no way she was going to be able to pull it off.  Also, what is Shirley doing leaving this task up to her grandma who  is on her 9th decade of life?  To top it all off, I couldn’t find the cable remote, it was quickly becoming a combustible situation.  I found Shirley in the kitchen and demanded an explanation, “Did you really think your grandma could turn on the TV!”  Her response was “I can’t believe you talk to me like that”  which was a valid response.  It turns out her grandma was just chilling and suddenly decided she wanted to watch TV, at her age, similar to a 3 year old, when an idea gets in her head it must immediately happen.

The following day was MLK day and my kids had school off, now that we have real internet Shirley can work from home and decided to keep the kids with her.  However, they began to drive her crazy by roughly 8:23.  My idea was to take them to a sledding hill in the afternoon to take advantage of the snow.  I found one on a website dedicated to sledding hills.  It was in Middleville and sounded spectacular.  However, and I should have realized this due to the last post about the sledding hill being from Obama’s first term, the hill was no where to be found.  I drove back and forth multiple times by the address where the hill was suppose to be and there was no sign of sledders.  I drove into Middleville and asked someone at a gas station if they knew of any sledding hill in the area, I may as well have been asking if there was a local restaurant with a 3 star Michelin rating.  Ultimately I found a sliding hill in Ionia from a much more reliable source, the top ten sledding hills in West Michigan according to Wood TV 8.  A couple of them were on the lakeshore and another handful I had already been to, so I decided on the ionia hill.

While Bertha Brock Park doesn’t sound all that promising, I was willing to give it a shot, and it didn’t disappoint.  The hill was treacherous and occupied by only a few sledders.  Parker and I were pretty excited but Aiden was his typical apprehensive (moldy turd) self.  The first run down the hill I was sitting with my feet in front of the sled, kicking up snow and ice into my face, it was an immediate face freeze that was akin to an ice cream headache but on your face.  The discomfort was an 11 on a 10 point scale.  I decided to ride on my stomach the next time down and things started  to fall into place until Aiden decided to ride down with me.  Due to the cloud cover it was difficult to determine the terrain of the hill until you were a second away from the terrain.  Neither Aiden or I saw the jump until we were right in front of it, fortunately we narrowly missed the jump but Aiden banged his knee on it and used this as an excuse to quit sledding.  He decided to hang at the bottom of the hill while Parker and I continued to sled.  Eventually we were able to coax Aiden into joining us again by telling him if he road down twice with all 3 of us on one sled we would leave.  He was instantly compliant with the promise of going home and the resulting reunion with my phone in the car on the way home.  All three of us piled on the sled and 7 feet from our start the two kids fell off the sled like a couple of bags of flour.

I talked Aiden into giving it one more shot and we made it much further down the hill the second time around.  Aiden thought this was it and that we were heading home but breaking promises is all part of being a good parent so Parker and I went down one last time while Aiden collected the extra sleds.  This time we were unable to avoid a jump camouflaged on the hill.  Unfortunately we didn’t even see it coming and we both went flying, creating an epic yard sale that likely lacerated my spleen, it was definitely a sign that we needed to head home.  While enduring winter can be quite an arduous task, getting out and enjoying winter definitely helps make it go by faster.  Boy, does Aiden have some tough sledding ahead of him until he becomes an adult and can decide for himself to never go outside.

 

This past Christmas was monumental for a number of reasons.  The first being that Shirley bought Air Pods for pretty much everyone we know who doesn’t already have a pair.  This will likely result in a bankruptcy filing by the Jansma’s at some point in 2020 when combined with all of her other frivolous Holiday spending, but we need to spend a little more to get our moneys worth before we file.  The second reason it was monumental is that Aiden no longer believes in Santa Claus.  This is the first Christmas he didn’t buy into the bullshit that is Jolly Old Saint Nick.  However, for some reason his skepticism about the fat man wearing a red suit hasn’t rubbed off on his younger brother who still believes in Kris Kringle (I am now officially out of alternative names for Santa Claus).  So, Parker believed every single present that said it was from Santa Claus came from the North Pole.  I revealed to one of the guys I play basketball with that Aiden no longer bought into Santa and he said he was pretty happy his kid also stopped because at some point a sustained belief in Santa by your kid makes you question their level of intelligence.  My response was that God doesn’t make any sense either with the whole no beginning and no end as well as the fact that he is all powerful but let Satan screw everything up (If there is anyone who has the ability to use a mulligan on something it seems it would be God).  On top of that, he could, if you believe he is all powerful, come up with any plan he wanted to save man from his sins but decide to send his son (who is actually him if the holy trinity thing is accurate) to die on a cross when he could have come up with any other thing he wanted as a pass for us to gain salvation and eternal life  (that sound like a really long time). Oh well, that’s why you gotta have faith right?

Back to something that doesn’t make my head hurt if I think too long about it.  Yesterday I had basketball practice for Parker (I’m the head coach) and it runs from 4:15 to 5.  After that I had basketball practice for Aiden (I’m the assistance coach) from 5 to 6:30.  It’s the the longest and sometimes the worst 2 hours and fifteen minutes of my week.  It really depends on how my week is going and how the kids are behaving as to where it ranks on the enjoyability scale.  Yesterday we had two kids go down in Parker’s practice, one kid hurt his finger and one kid landed on his tailbone.  Surprisingly, it wasn’t Henry.  Henry up until yesterday, had a season long streak of getting “injured” and crying in every single practice and game.  Parker knows better than to cry during practice, he knows that if he did I would just tell him to quit being a pussy.  However, my role as his head coach has not kept him from acting like a complete spazz.  Fortunately for him, all first grade boys act like complete spazzes so he fits right in.  In Aidens practice there was a collision between an over aggressive child who had about 30lbs on the kid he ran into, it was akin to a 18 wheeler hitting a Prius.  Had there been anyone who actually cared about safety present the kid would have been placed in concussion protocol, but after 30 seconds of letting the Prius shake it off, we resumed practice.

After basketball practice we went to dinner and both kids were given our phones along with our air pods (surprisingly Shirley did not pick them up a pair of their own this Christmas even though she bought a pair for her favorite Amazon driver).  Normally I try to limit them to access by forcing them off our devices when our food arrives but I was so tired of kids at that point that I didn’t even bother.  At dinner, in a brief respite from my phone Parker asked me to check his tooth to see if it was ready to come out.  It had a lot of give and very little resistance when I tested it out.  When we got home he wanted me to pull it out.  I have pulled out all of Aiden’s teeth and was fairly confident Parker’s was ready to come out.  I grabbed a piece of floss and tried to get it behind his tooth and between his other two teeth.  However, Parker initially resisted.  After a bit of coaxing I was able to get it into place and flick the floss, immediately blood poured out and the tooth was still there.  I gave it another flick and more blood came pouring out but the tooth still remained rooted to his gum.  He didn’t cry at all even though this tooth abstraction was going way worse than any I had done with Aiden.  In fact, I’m pretty sure that I waited until Aiden’s teeth were about to fall out on their own before I yanked them due to the fact that he is a delicate flower (aka pansy, but Shirley doesn’t let me call him that to his face).  I decided to get rid of the floss, put my index and thumb around the tooth and was eventually able to yank it out.  He had so much blood around his mouth it looked like he drank a glass of strawberry Kool-Aid.

Going back to our dinner, Parker had mentioned that there was girl in his class who was always looking back at him during music class and that he told the teacher about it.  He was upset about the fact that the teacher didn’t do anything about it.  At this age having a girl pay attention to him and like him is quite annoying.  Shirley asked if she should send a photo of Parker without his tooth to the girls mom and Parker said “yes, maybe she won’t like me anymore.”  Honestly, he doesn’t look as cute missing one of his front teeth.  However, I think it’s because he looks older now and while I realize as a parent you can’t stop your kids from getting older the reality is from from talking to friends with teenagers that I only have a few good years left with my kids.  Granted, I am sure almost every parent thinks it won’t happen to them.  I’m super cool, my kids will always want to hang out with me and think I am the greatest.  Well, I am not that naive, and just like the newly married husband who thinks the sex is never going to stop, it does, and so does your son’s affection once he figures out how to jerk off and it’s double trouble if they somehow mange to become popular.  Between dirtying up pairs of sweat socks and hanging out with their friends, they have very little time for their parents.  (I’m fairly confident Aiden will still have ample time to hang out with us even though he will likely be messing up a lot of sweat socks)

The crazy thing is that even though Aiden has written off Santa I think he still believes in the Tooth Fairy.  Or, he realizes that if he wants compensation for the last remaining baby teeth in his head he needs to at the very least play along with the whole tooth fairy charade.  So, last night he made no mention to Parker of the imaginary nature of the Tooth Fairy.  However, I kind of wish he had because I came in to the kids room to put some money under Parker’s pillow and Shirley was still in there.  She shooed me away not wanting me to wake either of them up and claimed she had money to put under Parker’s pillow.  I put the money I had with me on my night stand, not intending to give it all to Parker.  This morning Parker came down with $15 and told me I needed to pay him the $7 I owe him.  (I took money out of his money bag, he keeps it in a zip lock bag, to pay for something that he probably was the direct beneficiary of in early December).  When Shirley made her way down stairs I said “I thought you had your own money to give Parker for his tooth.”  She responded that she didn’t and that Parker had told her he thought his tooth was worth $15, I found this to be somewhat ironic since it was the exact amount I left on the night stand.  I had anticipated giving Parker $5 for his tooth (still quite generous).  The ultimate question for me is do I tell him that $7 of what the tooth fairy left him was to pay off my debt?

Those of you who live in the great white north understand that once Christmas is over there is very little to look forward to until the weather turns, which is typically sometime in June.  So, how does one survive the next four to five months?  If you play your cards right you schedule at least one or two vacations to warm weather destinations in an attempt to preserve ones sanity until the temperature permanently rises above 50 degrees.

While I have at least one trip scheduled to a warm weather destination, and may add at least one or two more depending on how the winter unfolds, there have to be other things to look forward to, right?  Wait, there is, every winter for the past four or five winters Shirley and I go on an adults only ski weekend with a couple of Shirley’s co-workers and their husbands.   The only problem is that last winter one of the couples bailed so they could fully commit to the cult that is kids travel hockey, leaving us to do the annual ski weekend with our kids and the other couple and their kids.  It was fun, just not exactly the same dynamic as previous years.  I can’t wait to get the band back together and put the adult ski weekend back on track this year.

While the ski weekend is typically the high point of the winter, there are other recent life altering changes that will greatly assist in making winter go by much faster than normal.  A few weeks before Christmas the Jansma’s were finally able to connect to legitimate high speed internet.  Prior to that point we had satellite internet (which is even worse than dial up) and Dish Network.  While Dish Network is watchable, they were in a contract dispute with HBO right up until the final season of Game Of Thrones aired (wish they would have done me a favor and not caved in to HBO’s demands) and they are currently in a dispute with Fox Sports Detroit.  Normally, I would be upset about the lack of Detroit sports options but there is currently no team from Detroit worth watching.  We are now able to stream any movie out there, the kids can play video games online, and most importantly, Shirley can now work from home.   We watched all of the Iron Man movies this past week thanks to our free year of Disney plus as Verizon customers.

While I have finally healed from the wounds inflicted at the hands of Parker’s long board, another Christmas gift has caused unmitigated damage in our home.  Shirley picked up a pair of Alexa’s, one of which was placed on the main level and the other in the kids room.  There is now a never ending battle between Shirley and I and the kids as to what Alexa plays.  Cleaning the kitchen is actually not a bad experience if Maroon 5 is playing in the background, however it is intolerable if it is done while listening to the poop song.  Yes, those of you who don’t have boys are probably unaware of the poop song.  There is actually a poop song along with a myriad of other songs written to appeal to boys ranging from 5 to 12 years of age containing lyrics primarily focused on the hilarity of bodily functions.

Somehow the kids were turned on to the comedian Jim Gaffigan.  While Parker typically chooses to listen to Henry Huggins as he falls asleep, he gave in to Aiden’s demand that Alexa play Jim Gaffigan.  Shirley was in bed with Parker and I was in bed with Aiden (we still cuddle with them for a few minutes every night) as Jim Gaffigan (who is mostly family friendly) was playing in the background.  He was going into a riff on people and their birthdays complaining about people who make a bid deal about their birthday.  This led to him mentioning the fact that society puts a lot of pressure on people to have a great time on their birthday.  “I shouldn’t have to pay for sex on my birthday” Immediately Parker (who is six years old) asked what sex is.  When we didn’t answer he kept asking.  Eventually we told him that it is something he would learn about later on from some kid at school or on the internet, Aiden added sex is for adults.  What I wanted to say is that one of your parents thinks it doesn’t happen enough and the other thinks it happens too much.

Jim Gaffigan focuses a lot of his humor on food, primarily how amazing meat is.  Foolishly, I thought I could make it through the darkest time of the year foregoing meat.  What led me to make such a terrible choice?  Well, on the last Sunday of the year we went over to Shirley’s vegetarian sister’s house.  Beginning on Christmas Day it was 24/7 Shirley’s family for me in some way, shape, or form.  On the 25th her mom and dad and 90 year old grandmother came to our house.  Shirley told me they were coming around 5, they showed up at 2.  The next day was the party for her mom’s entire side of the family hosted at our house.  (Her sister and brother in law, who I think are great(not the vegetarians), started staying at our house on the Christmas with their two boys ages 5 and 7) Shirley’s mom stayed at our house overnight on Christmas night as well as the 26th and possibly the 27th (its all a blur so I can’t be certain).

The event at the vegetarians house was a wine and cheese game night.  The trifecta of fun, right?  Well, things got off to a good start and we were all having a pretty good time. It was me, Shirley, both brother and sister in-laws as well as my in laws.  Somehow we decided to figure out where all the adults except my in laws were going to go to dinner the next night.  Every idea I came up with was shot down by my vegetarian sister in law. It was like trying to come up with a sexual position that works for a eunuch.  Doggie style? No, I can’t do that.  Missionary?  That doesn’t work either.  Reverse Cow Girl?  Of course not.  Not only was I battling the fact that I was dealing with a vegetarian, I was also dealing with a vegetarian who objected to one particular restaurant (that was very vegetarian friendly) because their barstools were too uncomfortable.  Ultimately I lost my shit, dropped a bunch of F bombs and walked out slamming the door behind me (by accident) stating “this is exasperating!”  On the way home in the Uber Shirley came at me fast and hard, while I was likely 90% in the wrong, there was no way I was admitting that in my half drunken state.

The next day I got a call from my vegetarian sister in law.  We ironed things out and I apologized.  I also explained why I acted like I did, I didn’t give her excuses for my behavior, merely explanations.  She thought I should probably apologize to her husband as well.  I called him and wasn’t surprised when he didn’t answer even though he spends more time with his phone than a millennial.  He eventually texted asking if I wanted to meet him at Madcap at 8 am the next morning. Fuck no.  We determined that we would hook up at the Starbucks at Forest Hills Food Saturday morning.  I texted him as I was leaving Crahen MVP to see if he was available and his reply was “let me check with L___, and see what we have going on”.  It’s a five to ten minute meeting tops, in my mind he was making this much more difficult than it needed to be.  Eventually I made it home and then was at Costco when I received a text indicating that the Starbucks at Target would work between 10 and noon.  I called him, he didn’t answer and eventually texted back that we kept missing one another.  I never responded to that text.

Do I just drop it?  I see him maybe four to five times a year.  No way he lets this go, but will the awkwardness at family events be less awkward than the inevitable awkwardness of our face to face meeting?  Regardless, this incident, along with many unhealthy choices during the holidays made me think I needed to give up meat for January.  January 1 wasn’t too bad, January 2 was ok, January 3 was decent and what kept me going was the moral superiority I felt over people who eat meat.  January 4 was a Saturday.  I made it through most of the day meat free until we had to decide on dinner.  I threw out a vegetarian suggestion and the kids asked why they were being forced punished.  We decided on Chicken Tikka Masala for dinner, it’s one of my specialties and my plan was to just keep the chicken out of mine.  However, I’m not going to lie, meat is great, even chicken, especially when you have gone almost four days without it.  Ultimately I ate the masala with chicken in it and it was fantastic.  What I realized during my almost four day vegetarian journey was one, eating is nothing special when you are vegetarian, without meat meals are kind of boring.  Fat vegetarians make complete sense to me now, your diet consists primarily of cheese and bread, even working out six hours a day isn’t going to keep someone who primarily exist on cheese and bread, skinny.  On top of that, you need to eat a lot of sugary junk food and unhealthy snack food to make up of the fact you are depriving yourself of meat.  Fortunately, going back on meat has taken me off suicide watch and given me something to live for.  I have to get rolling so I can pick the kids up and put a meatloaf in the oven.